Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Every once in a while, our professional and personal lives merge. That happened as we were finishing up our report, “Strengthening Heat Resiliency among Communities of Color in Southern Nevada,” which was completed in partnership with Morrison Institute and funded by the Walmart Foundation.
We recently received a call from our kids’ school informing us that its heating ventilation and air conditioning system was not working (again). In response, the school’s leadership team transported our middle-schoolers by bus to a high school. Less than two hours later, the school called again to say the students had been bused back to middle school.
Not much learning was done that day.
Ironically, the incident only reinforced the findings of our report.
Las Vegas is now the fastest-warming city in the United States. Recently, we interviewed more than 50 community members and leaders in Southern Nevada to better understand their experience with extreme heat and how COVID-19 exacerbated existing vulnerabilities to heat. Most reported that COVID-19 had exacerbated heat-related challenges and/or presented new ones in one of four decision spaces (e.g., public, private, transit and workplace).
Two conclusions from our report merit emphasis. First, most government-sponsored policies and programs in Southern Nevada that seek to mitigate the effects of extreme heat are location-based. For example, home weatherization and utility assistance programs provide support to people at home. NV Energy’s PowerShift program offers those who qualify free in-home energy assessments, smart thermostats, and energy-efficient amenities (e.g., dryers and refrigerators), and limited rebates for the purchase of energy-efficient home air conditioners.
However, almost two-thirds of the community members interviewed indicated that they were most likely to experience extreme heat in transit. This included driving in a personal vehicle that had a broken or inefficient air conditioning system, walking their children to and from school, waiting for public transportation, and walking to public places (e.g., parks, libraries). As such, we recommend that decision makers explore programs that help residents address their exposure to heat during transit.
Among the possible policy interventions are covered shelters at bus stops and the installation of water bottle refilling stations and water misters at bus stops. Additionally, public decision makers should consider creating a fund that helps low-income individuals, seniors on fixed incomes, and medically fragile individuals fix or purchase air conditioning systems for their vehicles.
Speaking of transit — our second and somewhat related conclusion is that our built environment is being challenged by extreme heat and decision-makers may need to adapt and reimagine the ways we design our environment (and allocate resources to do so). For example, most bus stops in Southern Nevada are constructed from materials that absorb heat.
Additionally, the incident at our children’s school revealed (once again) that schools are not prepared to withstand the effects of extreme heat. Of the 350-plus schools in Clark County School District, about one third are at least 30 years old, and another third are 20 to 29 years old. That 20-29 range is significant, because that’s the age when systems tend to start failing. CCSD has stated that deferred maintenance and the “modernization, life cycle and equity updates” of its schools and buildings total $7.9 billion. As of the end of 2019, CCSD had “amassed a backlog of around 15,000 maintenance requests for HVAC, plumbing and structural repairs” and was warned that some of the systems were “dangerously close to imminent failure.”
In addition to HVAC systems, we would suggest that school water fountains, while not previously deemed essential, are critical parts of the built environment that merit attention given sustained temperatures of over 100 degrees. Many water fountains in CCSD’s schools are dirty and may even be non-functioning. Certainly, they do not meet COVID-19 safety guidelines. Clean and functioning water fountains and water bottle-refilling stations are critical to student safety and health.
Water-bottle refilling stations at every school would provide relief from the heat for students and their families who walk to and from school, for students in foster care, and for housing-insecure students who may not have readily available access to water away from school. (More than 10,000 homeless students are enrolled at CCSD.)
The effects of extreme heat are not evenly distributed throughout our valley. A 2021 study examining urban locations in the southwestern United States found that, on average, the poorest 10% of neighborhoods in an urban setting were 4 degrees hotter than the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods on both extreme heat days and average summer days.
Similarly, the gaps in our built infrastructure at our schools also fall along socioeconomic lines. Many old schools, which are in the region’s urban core where poverty rates and unemployment rates are higher, lack high-performing HVAC systems and water fountains that are clean or usable. One CCSD teacher said she taught for four months without air conditioning or heating in East Las Vegas.
Southern Nevada has $440 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds. CCSD has $777 million in ARP funds to invest in its students. Admittedly, investing in HVAC systems does not seem as critical as investing in Tier I instructional materials for English Language Arts or pre-K expansion. However, a 2020 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that there is an impact of heat on learning: Researchers “demonstrate that heat inhibits learning and that school air conditioning may mitigate this effect. New nationwide, school-level measures of air conditioning penetration suggest patterns consistent with such infrastructure largely offsetting heat’s effects. Without air conditioning, a 1°F hotter school year reduces that year’s learning by 1%. Hot school days disproportionately impact minority students, accounting for roughly 5% of the racial achievement gap.”
We live in a region that is experiencing rising temperatures. Given the amount of time our students and their families spend in transit and inside school buildings, it is critical that decision-makers explore ways to direct some of Nevada’s ARP funds to ensuring the fundamental safety and well-being of our community members, particularly those who are vulnerable to heat.
Nancy Brune, Ph.D., is the executive director of the Guinn Center, an affiliate of UNR. Lorena Rodriguez is the Guinn Center’s bilingual policy analyst and an instructor at UNLV.
